The driver in the 58 class later gets out is my uncle the late Len Hadley ex top dog Orange depot. Here he is quite young. Skin cancer on the face got him in the end facing the hot sun heading west every other day.
What an amazing sight and sound this must have been!!! I would love to see and hear a full footplate ride from Lithgow Box (or Coal Stage Box) up the 1 in 42 to Zig Zag Box on a "Big Engine." It was all grossly inefficient (4 engines plus Guard's Van - 9 crew all up) but what an experience!!!! 😍😍😍
As older hands may recall, the nascent NSW RTM sought to have both a 57 and a 58 preserved, the railways told them they could only have one. The RTM chose to stick with 5711. Heretical question: should they have asked for 5812 instead? Last mainline steam locomotive built in NSW (5813 was completed first); would now be only Cardiff built loco left (we cant really say 3813 survives); and given its youth at withdrawal probably better condition than 5711 despite years of outside storage at Enfield?
I remember at the end of a video which also featured some footage of Garratts and the ending of Days of Steam Volume 2 - The Final Days of Steam in the NSW Railways.
sounds like a roomfull of locos - all talking at once ! Is it better to have locomotives pulling and pushing such a heavy train ?? Old South Wales . land of little trains .
I was looking at this and thinking ( with horror) of working the second or third engine up through those ten tunnels. Life must have been hard for the poor crews. Personally I have become rather accustomed to breathing.
He doesn't say that!!! Yes, 1957 was far from the final year of steam on the NSWR, that being 1972 (full year). Those that know their NSWGR history from this era will know that steam finished on the west to Lithgow and to Gosford in 1958, with 46 class electrics taking over from then onwards.
As Mixed Gauge Videos says in comment below, I did not say that. What I said was "These were some of the most awesome....... and would cease in 1957". Those workings, not steam in NSW. In fact, I didn't mention NSW, anyway.